by Adeiza Momohjimoh
General Manager and Deputy Director News of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, PRIME FM 101.5 LOKOJA, Nigeria
China is one of the countries in East Asia. It is the largest of all Asian countries. Occupying nearly the entire East Asian landmass, it covers approximately one-fourteenth of the land area of Earth, and it is almost as large as the whole of Europe. China is also one of the most populous countries in the world, rivaled only by India, which, according to United Nations estimates, surpassed it in population in 2023.
China is the home of one of the world’s oldest civilizations, but it has only recently become a “modern” nation. In the last 20 years, China has changed faster than any other country in the world.
China, undoubtedly is one of the superpowers of the world. The country China has made a remarkable impact in all the spheres of human endeavours but the mere fact that the country China did not take part in the struggle for terrorities and colonization of Africa made the country to be a bit removed from Africa. Children of African descents in their elementary schools are made to study and have knowledge of countries that colonized them thereby relegating knowledge about China to the background as far as Africans are concerned.
Chinese government in the recent time has also made some concrete efforts in bridging the gap between China and Africa. These efforts are in the areas of trade, commerce, bilateral relations and military cooperation. For example, Ethiopia, a country in Africa signed military cooperation agreement with China in 2005 and the agreement covers military training, technology exchange and joint peace keeping mission.
Similarly, there is significant improvement in trade and commerce between China and Africa. In 2022 for example, the largest exporter from Africa to China was Angola followed by DR Congo and South Africa. While in the same year, South Africa was the highest buyer of Chinese goods followed by Nigeria and Egypt.
The cooperation between Nigeria and China is yielding result to the extent that Nigerian government in its bid to preserve the value of its currency Naira, considered the adoption of the Chinese currency, Yuan. This effort by the Nigerian government is to stop the depreciation of the naira.
The footprints of China in Nigeria and other Africa countries have become so conspicuous that life will no longer be the same if they are removed or no longer exist.
In the area of employment in Nigeria and other countries in Africa, Chinese companies are providing gainful employments for thousands of youths. Likewise, products be it the ones imported from China and those manufactured by Chinese factories in Africa have become indispensable in most African homes.
Nigeria therefore, needs to up its relationship with China in the area of agricultural cooperation. Though, since year 2000 Nigeria-China started to strengthen their agricultural cooperation, food security remains a severe challenge in Nigeria. It is time the Nigerian authority do all it needs to do to strengthen her cooperation with China to improve agriculture. It is worrisome that China the most populous country in the world can still feed her citizens successfully while Nigeria with vast abundant agricultural resources and just over 200 million people is facing the challenge of food security.
For any country to be able to drive development, food security should serve as indispensable driver. Therefore, the time to act fast is now so that Nigeria can cash on the goodwill of China to make the challenge of food insecurity a thing of the past.
Another area Nigeria need to explore with China to improve her development is in education. In year 2019 alone, Nigeria had six thousand eight hundred forty five Nigerians studying in China. And according to China admission records, five hundred and twelve of the students population are on Chinese government scholarships. I think Nigeria will need to improve on this giving the importance of education in driving development. Since achieving remarkable progress in science, technology and ICT will drive development in Nigeria, the country as a matter of priority needs to improve its educational cooperation with China to enable her produce the technical manpower required to push the country’s aspiration forward.
One other area that Nigeria- China cooperation must focus, is the area of health care. It is a thing of joy when the Consul General of the Republic of China in Lagos Yan Yuqing recently in a statement said Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China held talk with H.E. Yusuf Tuggar Minister of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Nigeria. These talks should have issues of health and other allied matters as focal areas because of the important role health plays in our general well-being.
Cooperation in drugs manufacturing and others health equipment should receive greater attention for the benefit of the masses.
Conclusively, the technological breakthrough and advancement in science and medicine by China have made the country a household name in African homes. From infrastructure like roads, rails, bridges to ICT, phones, the signature of China is firmly imputed on the African’s soil. It is therefore, a welcome development that programme like this year forum event would further enrich the knowledge of all participants about China and her relations with other parts of the world.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.